Voice and Video Chat in Gmail

"We've tried to make this an easy-to-use, seamless experience, with high-quality audio and video. And we've built this product using Internet standards, such as XMPP, RTP, and the newly-standardized H.264/SVC video codec."

To try the new features go to http://mail.google.com/videochat and install the required plug-in (it works in Windows XP/Vista, Intel-based Mac, using IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari 3+). After restarting the browser, open Gmail, select a contact from the chat section and see if there's an option named "Video & more". If you can't find this option, your friend didn't install the plug-in yet.

Instead of developing new versions of the Google Talk desktop application, Google decided to focus on its most popular communication channel and add the missing features. Too bad that you need to install yet another plug-in...

And to complement my previous comment, this feature isn't working, at least not under Windows Vista. I'm using Chrome, but not IE nor Firefox display that cam icon or the option "Video & more". I tried this on 2 computers. Yes, I've installed the plugin correctly and restarted the browser.

It's a shame that a company so commited in innovation on Search and Mail does such a terrible job with IM.

"After restarting the browser, open Gmail, select a contact from the chat section and see if there's an option named "Video & more". If you can't find this option, your friend didn't install the plug-in yet."

G. Why would it work for you but not ME? I'm using Firefox as my primary Browser and I have tried and tried, installing the Voice and Video plugin, but cannot get it to work on Firefox, although it does work on Chrome. Using MacBook Pro also. HELP?

its extremely obnoxious how it does not support my powerPC mac. it has a built-in microphone, so why cant i just use it for voice chat? im always on gmail with my friends, but a girl i like just tried to voice chat with me, but i wouldnt work! im not tech-savvy so dont make fun of me if the answer is really obvious and makes me look stupid, but please explain if its just not possible or they just wont do it?

My my, what a lot of angry people! It's worked flawlessly for me in the UK on Windows Vista with Firefox, and the quality is far better than Skype. It's very smart, and I've been waiting for this for a long time. I would really like the client(s) to support this too.

For those of you not able to call people, are you sure that person has the plugin? Let's calm down a little...

What's the point of the Google Talk plugin? Who uses Google Talk but not GMail? The desktop app has always only ever been useful as a notifier to me. Is there something simple (and better) that I don't know about?

What's the point of the Google Talk plugin? To bring Google Talk's functionality to Gmail, iGoogle and other Google apps. Most Google Talk users chat from Gmail, so it makes sense to bring the additional features there.

Google Talk, the software available at talk.google.com, has been abandoned. Google works on unifying Google Talk flavors for the web (Gmail Chat, Google Talk gadget) with the desktop app and the first step of the integration was Google Talk Labs Edition.

"The philosophy for the Google Talk team is to enable real time communication where and how people need it, across different platforms, devices, and operating systems. Towards these goals, we have made Google Talk available through web interfaces like Gmail chat and the Google Talk gadget, as well as directly from the desktop through our own downloadable client and via many XMPP clients. We have faced some challenges in keeping the capabilities for each of these versions of Google Talk up to date, and we have heard your feedback on striving towards more feature parity across all versions. (...)

Google Talk, Labs Edition is a first step towards a more unified experience whether you're using Talk through the web or on the desktop. Some of our savvy users may already appreciate the advantages of this approach, and we are confident that the continued improvements being made will translate into a better Google Talk experience for all our users." (from Google Talk Blog)

"Today we support H.264/SVC, an extension of H.264/AVC that excels in realtime scenarios. As SVC is a superset, the Gmail client can currently decode an AVC bitstream, and clients receiving a SVC bitstream can do some minimal NAL sorting to decode just the AVC component of the bitstream. We plan to add support for sending an AVC bitstream if the remote client requests it. In the future we may also support H.263."

"Right now, any client that supports the Google Talk "session" extension to XMPP and a compatible set of codecs can participate in calls with Gmail voice and video chat."

what about linux users like me.when i migrated from windows to linux,i really missed gtalk,but linux was and is cool enough to keep me engrossed,no matter what!!!google supports an OS that is too inferior to ubuntu,but no ray of hope for the linux users.

Hello Google did you know you had a lot of frinds using linux.. You have given us Openness, Super email and calendar, Google-docs and more making it easier to escape the Microsoft trap.

However, your many friends are about to get a bit tired of you software releases that are only for Windows.. this hurts.. anyway so far I am staying with Skype (though this is not a perfect solution) and Firefox..

I would ofcourse care for my friends first, and then the other once later...No of course I see the dilemma - but what I am worried about is that it may be more political/tactical decision than technical. Meaning that we could be looking at another proprietary protocol and codex, that google would not like to open source.. this could be a bad sign.. hopefully I am wrong about it.

I guess that the technical stuff - at least in the beta phase should not be a big issue for a large clever company as google ... really this cannot be a realistic excuse.

google doesn't care about linux users anymore they have blown us off with chrome, and gmail syncing tools (were is the evolution setup utility? they make one for outlook.) Why not include us in anything at all?

The G1 uses linux, if google can support a phone with enbeded nix* then they should bring all their apps to linux.

I would like to have a linux version - as I could then slap it on an eeepc and send it to my parents for video conferencing so they can see their grand daughter. It would be a nice little solution for them that they can just open up to conference with us.

Honestly, I was really excited when gmail said they had video and voice chatting, so I went out and downloaded the file to my computer, and so did my boyfriend. Funny thing about it was when we both tried (Not at the same time) to start the chat, it wouldn't work. It would put mine (or his, whomever initiated the chat) in the corner, and is supposed to bring up the others picture, but it would only show our own. I'm getting quite frustrated at this point, and so is my boyfriend. Has anyone else come across this problem? Or is it just me?

Could anyone suggest me a solutionIm using Windows Vista.When am initiating a video chat i can see only his profile picsame is the case with himBut when i checked the chat settings camera and microphone are detected correctly.But still the problem persists.Please suggest a soulution.I don't know whether this is the correct place to put a Query

i keep trying but i have a macbook and it tells me to exit all web browsers when i do that i click ok still it just flashes and comes back! what can i do please please please help me! if you know what to do please help email me at helpme7@gmail.com thanks!

I have tried it on Windows XP + Firefox. Although the settings page correctly detects the video and sound , when I initiate the video call with someone else, my picture appears in the corner. But the person on the other side cannot hear my voice nor see the video.

Now for most programmers within Google who are working on this, it might be working and they dont have any trouble with it. Without seeing any logging or debug, it might be difficult to try and debug the issue.The problem has been going on for the past 3 months I think. And I have yet to see any response or feedback from the Google team. Is there any way, we can see or upload some logs of the debug for the programmers to debug?

I also use Linux, and I have started losing my respect for google for their lack of support for linux/BSD with their apps. Google has benefited greatly from free software. Although they have contributed a few things back to the movement, their lack of enthusiasm for porting apps onto linux/BSD has left me disillusioned and I wait for the next big open-source/Free company that can push standardization on the internet and equal consideration for all widely distributed OSes. For those of you waiting with bated breath for linux ports of Gtalk dont hold your breath. If they wanted to do it, they would have already done it.

GTALK GTALK GTALK - I don't want to have my email window all the time.. it's connection fails after being open for too long. I want an IM client on my desktop.. Why would they concentrate on updating a web plugin for gmail when people want IM software? I try to promote google, and I try to convert people to Gmail accounts. But no one wants to talk through email. People want to talk through a proper IM client. I would hope google would be intelligent enough to realize that..

If you can't provide the plugin for firefox for linux, at least use the firefox user agent/build id provided by many distributions to identify the operating system and disable the googletalk functions in gmail for unsupported operating systems. In other words, CHANGE GMAIL SO IT STOPS NAGGING ME TO INSTALL A PLUGIN THAT DOESN'T EXIST!!!

1. Please linux lovers by telling them that you are working on it. And dont just please them, do something.2. This idea of online installer is bad. There are cases, when it just doesn't work.3. A common update background task is cool. But won't it be even cooler, if all the packages had individual modules which would check for updates for everyone. Say if someone has GDesktop, GChrome, Gtalk, Picasa. As soon as he runs Picasa, the update tool >> checks if any update has been done in past N hours>> if no, then it just checks for all the packages installed >> runs an update process that updates all Gsoftwares

This could not be the best idea, but i think a background process for updation is uneasy.

That's very nice plugin. With the help of it, i can speak with my family.They live very far. But there is some problem in Firefox 3.0.9 version. Don't want to chat. I re-installed firefox and plugins,but it was effective. Anyway i like it !

"Lastly, thanks to everyone who has written in asking about support for Linux. We've had to rewrite a key piece of technology, so this has taken some time. However, the results will be worth the wait."

I know there might be some people with good will in the company, but please, Google, STOP BEING A LEECHER!!!All your server farms run linux. You internally run linux. You plan to hit microsoft with chrome os.Yet, linux support for end users is too limited...At least don't be dumb enough to release chrome os (which is linux) without support for voice chat in gmail...

When searching for the word "linux" on this page, I can find 81 entries of it as of November 29, 2009. Picasa using Wine, no SketchUp, Flash sucks on Linux, and yet Google still uses it, and not Theora...Have you forgotten us, Google? We're still here. All 30,000,000 of us. We're waiting.

Every time i am trying to use voice and video chat in gmail i am being asked to install it and even after downloading and restarting the browsers if i log in again i'm being asked to download it......can u help me how to download them and use permanently

I love all google apps & labs, but this is not available in Linux yet!! This is frustating!! I follow the guy that said:"If you're not developing a version for Linux, could you maybe at least think about releasing an API so the Linux dev community can get to work on it?"

I would very very VERY much appreciate you good folks at google HQ to port the video plugin for linux. After all you are going to soon release your on debian/linux based OS; of course I am refuring to Chrome OS. I can only hope near that time you will finally give what has been asked for on this page for a very long time indeed. and let me just say I am willing to beta/alpha test this plugin for you. I am currently running the most up to date build of debian soon to be switching to ubuntu 10.04.

Really sucks a linux version never game out. Running google chrome os right now and my webcam gets to sit idle since no software supports video chat in chrome for linux. What happens when they release in 3-4 months and still no video?

at lest ten time vioce and video chat has been downloaded but this plug in is still not availabe in the gmail.do not know what is wrong with this why google do not make it simple and usufull to all if google realy wants to provide better service to usears.

does anybody know the answer to these questions re/ Gmail CHAT?1- if MY gmail Chat camera is ON, and the other person doesn't have their video available to me, can they STILL SEE ME? i.e. am I automatically VISIBLE to anyone I chat with is I have a green CAMERA icon by my name? mjmartyjo@gmail.comTHANKS!

I have downloded the voice/video chat plugin for Gmail and it has worked for a few months, but then a few days ago I go on Gmail and my icon turns to the little green dot. I tried dowbloding it again, didn't work. I uninstalled it and tried downloading the plugin again, didn't work. I have tried signing in then out of the chat, STILL "need to donwload it". And of course I tried making a new profile and doing all those again, didn't work. I notice when I finish downloading the plugin, it goes to the screen where it says that the plugin needs to use "ActiveX control" and I have to click allow, but it won't let me click allow, it redirects to my Gmail profile instead. I don't know what to do now, if you can help fix this problem, it would very much be appreciated. Thanks if you can help. millenium.matt@gmail.com

I wish Google would eliminate the whole idea of being in the browser < login into gmail < open up Google Chat plugin to receive calls. I wish they would integrate into one Software! Put it all into Google Talk < Windows Client.